


beati i puri di cuore

by amosanguis



Series: baseball horrorthon 2k18 [5]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Demons, Exorcisms, Friendship, Gen, Mild Horror, Priest Anthony Rizzo, Religious Content, gen - Freeform, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 23:56:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16335803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amosanguis/pseuds/amosanguis
Summary: Father Anthony is a lot of people's last chance.





	beati i puri di cuore

**Author's Note:**

> \--Author is not Catholic so most of the information here was gleaned from Wikipedia and _The Young Pope_ – if there is anything glaringly wrong, please kindly point it out.  
>  \--Gonna tell y’all right now there’s no sex/kissing. This is 100% gen.  
> \--Title is Italian for "blessed are the pure in heart."

-z-

 

Father Anthony is a lot of people’s last chance. He’s only called in when others have failed, not only once, not only twice – but three times and more, and the homeowner or renter has absolutely nowhere else to go.

Anthony’s been thrown against walls and he’s been impaled with everything from nail files to splintered broom handles. He’s faced down vengeful spirits and poltergeists and high-ranking demons. He wears his cancer scars like armor and laughs at the taunts about his too-short baseball career.

“I’ve heard it all before,” Anthony says to the daughter, Hannah, as Hannah’s mother Eve, thrashes in her chair, snarling at them all. Ford, Hannah’s father, kneels at his wife’s side, arms wrapped around himself to keep from reaching out to Eve. Anthony turns back to Eve, says to the demon inside her, “Your years of torturing this family are over – time to return to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

And Anthony doesn’t need to read from his bible as he flicks the holy water and recites the requisite prayers.

 

-x-

 

Anthony is tipping back a beer, sitting alone in his empty house, when his phone goes off – it was a call from Bishop Rassas of Chicago. There was a baseball player in need of Anthony’s services; things had gotten so bad he’d been placed on the disabled list. Bishop Rassas then off-handedly mentions that he’s already talked with Anthony’s superiors and that Anthony’s been cleared to fly out first thing tomorrow morning should Anthony be willing to accept the sudden assignment.

Anthony quirks an eyebrow at that.

“Your Excellency,” he starts, “surely a man of such wealth can afford to move?”

“He has,” Bishop Rassas says, “five times.”

Anthony blinks. “I’ll get my things ready,” he says, standing up.

 

-

 

Kris Bryant is taller than he looks on tv and just as handsome. But that handsomeness is marred by the dark circles under his eyes and the long gashes that travel down the length of his throwing arm.

“I’ve been through _five_ different homes,” Kris says. “This is my _sixth_. Whatever this is – it’s following me and it’s not letting me go. I haven’t slept in a year. I’ve been attacked. My things have been destroyed. I’ve been exorcised and blessed more times than I’ve been to baseball games this season.” Kris steps forward and once again Anthony is struck by the difference in their height. “Please, Father. If you can’t help me, then I doubt anyone can.”

That’s when Anthony sees it: that dark little smudge against Kris’s neck and the small wisp of black smoke floating out from the corner of Kris’s lips as he talks. Anthony glances at the deep furrows gouged in Kris’s arm and sees then that they’re leaking black pus.

The others can’t see these things, but Anthony realizes that whatever it is that he’s dealing with – it’s powerful, and it won’t let go easily.

Anthony looks Kris in the eye, sees the black smoke swirling and undulating like a powerful thundercloud, and says, “It’s okay, now. I’ll get you through this.”

Kris sighs out a puff of blackness and nods and runs his fingers through his hair with his good arm.

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you so much, Father.”

 

-

 

Anthony starts with a basic cleansing of Kris’s current home – he has to lay down the plastic, so to speak, before he can begin repainting.

He sets up wards and traps and checks on them every day; he inspects then blesses Kris’s baseball gear and then the gear of his teammates, many of whom were welcoming – their concern for Kris nearly as overwhelming as whatever it was that had hold of Kris. Not all of them believe, but they went along with the blessings nonetheless.

Anthony can read the past blessings in all that he touches, sees the weak imprint of them. They’re not much a foundation, but they’re what Anthony has to work with. So he says the prayers and builds on them and builds on them – creating powerful wards and traps.

It’s when the traps keep coming up empty that Anthony starts thinking he needs to change his diagnosis.

 

-

 

“Nothing’s changed, Father,” Kris says in lieu of a greeting when he opens his door to let Anthony in. The circles under his eyes have darkened and there were fresh gashes along his arm.

Anthony steps in close and gingerly takes Kris’s arm with both hands to inspect the new wounds – they were already leaking black pus, the stench of sulfur wafting thick off of them. He says, “I’ve noticed. Tell me, Kris,” Anthony looks up, meets Kris’s eyes and holds his gaze, “do you like pie?”

Kris is pulled up short by the question and Anthony smirks, stepping into the house and around Kris, heading for the kitchen, Kris following a beat later after closing the front door with a soft click. Anthony touches his fingers to the walls as he walks, pushing against the traps that _should_ have caught anything Kris was carrying with him – but, just as they had been for a week, they were still empty.

In the kitchen, Anthony slides his backpack from his shoulder and pulls out a Tupperware filled with blueberry pie. _Homemade_ blueberry pie. Anthony finds people react better to what he’s about to say when their bellies were filled with a good pie – being in his priest’s uniform helps, too, but not to the extent that the pie does; their combined power, though, helps immensely.

“What’s this for?” Kris asks, immediately suspicious.

Anthony ignores him and goes about plating two slices – helping himself to Kris’s expansive kitchen. Apparently, a lot of Kris’s dishware had been shattered by the time he’d moved into house number three, so Kris had simply switched to paper and plastic until this could be dealt with.

Kris sighs and settles on an island stool when Anthony gestures for him to do so, watching warily as Anthony sets the pie and fork down in front of him.

“Whatever this is,” Kris says, his sigh carrying a note of resignation, “I’m not going to like it. Am I?”

Anthony makes a pointed show of taking a large bite out of his pie before Kris finally takes the hint and takes his own bite – moaning sinfully against his fork. Anthony smirks and takes another bite, grinning over his fork at Kris. Slowly, Kris begins to loosen up and the silence sits comfortably between them as they eat.

When the pie is gone, Anthony slides his plate away and folds his hands together on the countertop. The tension that had eased away from Kris’s shoulders with every bite of pie is back again and he’s no longer able to meet Anthony’s eyes.

Anthony just goes for it.

“Kris,” he starts, “you’re not possessed.” Immediately Kris’s eyes widen, and his head jerks up and anger is beginning to bubble up to the surface, but then Anthony puts a calming hand over Kris’s clenched fist and continues. “You’re not possessed _anymore_. Something that I’m sure is still a fairly recent development – whatever demon had you probably left of its own accord a week or so before you called me. Or maybe it fled when it heard my name from Bishop Rassas.

“But,” Anthony gestures to the new gashes, wounds doubtlessly inflicted while asleep and in the throes of the many nightmares the recently possessed are susceptible to, “you _are_ sick. The demon was powerful and it being in your life for a very long time—" Anthony looks down at the marks “—it’s like the fallout of a nuclear strike. You’ve got the radiation sickness equivalent of a demonic possession.”

When Anthony looks back up, Kris’s eyes are wet, the blue of them almost overwhelmed by that roiling blackness just behind his irises, and he’s swallowing hard, his voice raw when he asks, “What can I do to get better?”

Anthony leans back in his chair. “Typically, I’d advise you to stay home and rest and to have blessings by a priest done not just on the home, but also on yourself. _But_ ,” he makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and shakes his head, “you’re hardly typical and I imagine that you’ll be wanting to get back into game shape sooner rather than later, right?”

Kris emphatically nods, says, “Whatever it takes.”

It takes Anthony only a second to decide what to do.

“Okay, then,” he says, standing and grabbing their empty plates and moving towards the trash can. “Pack a bag.”

 

-

 

Bringing Kris into his Florida home wasn’t a hard choice. His home was powerfully warded, it was a protected space and thus a perfect sanctuary – it would act like a potent salve to Kris’s wounded and infected body, mind, and soul.

“One week,” he’d told Kris that day in Kris’s kitchen, leaning against the counter with his arms folded over his chest. “Seven _full_ days. Meaning you can’t leave until the morning of the eighth day.” He’d barely finished speaking before Kris was already agreeing and running off to pack a bag and call the front office of the Chicago Cubs.

They’re not even into the house, just walking up the drive, before a weight seems to lift from Kris’s shoulders; once inside, Kris falls to his knees and Anthony holds him as Kris _shatters_.

The emotionality isn’t a surprise to Anthony.

Kris had been like a man wandering through the desert, slowly and unknowingly dying of thirst, just to suddenly find himself swimming in the fresh and clear blue waters of an oasis – it’s a shock to the system, and the body rarely knows how to handle it, so it releases everything all at once. All of the stress and the exhaustion and the fear – it all comes out at once.

Then, for three days, all Kris does is sleep.

While Kris sleeps, Anthony keeps the house purified, stretching himself over all the property as he says his prayers and keeps the holy water and holy oil in near constant use – he didn’t want Kris’s infection to spread or saturate his home. It was like constantly changing a bandage – it was something he had to do to keep the wound from any further infections and to speed up the healing process.

 

-

 

What Anthony has – it’s not magic. Some might say it’s close, but Anthony’s never believed it. To him, it’s his faith and strength and goodness solidified and given form, giving him a powerful sway over the evil things of the world.

Joining the Catholic church had never been part of the plan, but with his gift and the second chance he’d been given after staring down his cancer, he felt he had to do _something_ with it – and this is where that path led him.

 

-

 

Day four is a Saturday and Anthony has just returned home from an appointment with the bishop of his see, his region, updating him on Kris’s case before getting handed three more files – future patients, all of them in the northeast. He’s setting the files on a sideboard by his doorway, hanging his keys on a hook and reaching up to undo his Roman collar when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye.

“Ah,” he says, unable to stop the smile from quirking the corners of his lips upwards, “you’re awake.”

Anthony steps in close and puts a hand to each side of Kris’s face, using his thumb to pull at the bottom eye lids – the dark circles under Kris’s eyes had faded though there were still the barest wisps of smoke drifting in his eyes. Releasing Kris’s head, Anthony reaches for his arm and looks over the scabbed-over gashes – they no longer oozed black pus nor smelled of sulfur.

“You’re coming along a lot better than I thought you would,” Anthony says with a decisive nod as he steps away from Kris and makes his way towards the kitchen.

“Thanks? I think?” Kris asks, trailing along behind Anthony. “This place is just so peaceful. I don’t know how you can ever leave it.”

Anthony smiles at that as he starts working on getting them coffee – turning on his Keurig that had been a gift from a priest out in California after Anthony had exorcised his sister-in-law, Eve, of a particularly nasty demon; Anthony would have refused it, but the priest had had it mailed to Anthony’s home – the package had been waiting for Anthony on his doorstep when he’d gotten home.

“Faith, Kris,” Anthony is saying, “faith can turn any home into a sanctuary.”

“I’m a ball player, Father,” Kris says with a snort, “I’ve got faith. Still didn’t help, did it?”

Anthony turns away from the machine, the whistling and bubbling behind him starting as the first cup began to brew and settles with his back against the counter and his hands settling on the counter beside his hips.

“And yet, as a ball player, would you let a few rough games diminish your faith in your teammates? Your managers and coaches?” Anthony asks, cocking his head to the side to watch Kris.

“I think you can grant me that demonic possession is a little more trying on faith than a slump,” Kris says, voice hardening just the slightest.

“I can,” Anthony says, pitching his voice low and soft, appeasing, before he turns to grab the coffee mug, now filled, and places it in front of Kris, along with creamer from the fridge and the sugar jar and its spoon, before he hits the requisite buttons on the Keurig to start his own coffee.

As he does, Kris asks, “Have you ever been possessed?”

“No,” Anthony answers readily enough; it’s a question he gets asked often. “But I’ve faced down plenty of demons, among other things, and there’ve been one or two powerful ones where I thought maybe I wasn’t going to walk away.”

“What’s the scariest thing you’ve seen?” Kris asks before wincing at himself, as if the question had slipped out before he could stop it. He hastens to add: “You don’t have to answer, Father.”

A myriad of images flash in Anthony’s minds eye as he fills his coffee with a splash of creamer – young girls pulling their hair out and vomiting thick metal nails; men screaming as they dig their fingers into their eyes or bite down on their tongues to swallow the pieces; filth and blasphemes flowing out of whoever he was trying to heal along with blood and spittle, all tinged black – but none of it compared to one of his first cases.

“Everyone that moved into this one house kept getting murdered,” Anthony starts. “For ten years no one lived very long past three or four months in the house. I got called in by the bishop of the see – he thought that something had hold of the house.”

“What was it?” Kris asks.

Anthony meets Kris’s eyes, says flatly, “The neighbors.” He shrugs and looks away again. “They weren’t possessed or under any influence – that’s the scary part. Demons and spirits: I can handle them; people, I find, are a little tougher. This man and his wife couldn’t have kids, so they took it out on the families that kept moving into the empty house next door. At least, that’s what the spirits in the house told me.”

“You can talk to ghosts, too?” Kris asks once he’s able to find his voice – the horror of the story slowly sinking in.

“Never before and not since,” Anthony says with a shrug. “I get feelings sometimes, like a hunch – but nothing with that kind of clarity. The,” Anthony pauses, searching, “the _intensity_ of the hatred with which these people were killed – it seemed to add strength to their spirits, they _needed_ someone to talk to and I was the first one to walk in who could listen.”

Kris just nods, seemingly at a loss for words. Anthony shoves away the memories and offers Kris a reassuring smile and pat on Kris’s uninjured arm, before he changes the subject by asking which ballpark Kris preferred to play in.

“Wrigley, of course,” Kris answers, without hesitation or doubt.

“Of course,” Anthony echoes, bringing his coffee to his lips.

 

-

 

By day five, the blackness is almost completely gone from Kris’s eyes.

It’s strange for Anthony – having another body moving around his home, someone else using the dishes or occupying the bathroom or watching tv when he comes back from errands.

Kris is an excellent guest, though, and is always trying to minimize his footprint in Anthony’s life. Anthony, watching Kris wash the dinner dishes, finds he wouldn’t mind much if Kris _did_ leave a little bit of himself here. He’s become more then just another patient – Anthony had realized that as soon as he decided to bring Kris into his home – and Anthony just knows that, perhaps in another life, they may have been very good friends.

And with that thought, Anthony moves to stand beside Kris, a towel in hand and a joke on his lips.

 

-

 

Anthony flips through the files given to him by the bishop. It was looking more and more like all three would be needing his help. There were two families in Maryland and another in Pennsylvania.

Both Maryland families looked like they were dealing with a poltergeist – they had both spent their life savings just to make the move and to buy a house.

The Pennsylvanian family was a family of veterans and had borrowed heavily against their retirement to send their three children to college and now, so far in debt, there was no chance they’d be able to move away from the demon that had obviously taken up with them.

As he’s deciding who to help first, Kris walks into the room and settles quietly opposite Anthony with a plate of reheated pizza and a beer. They let the silence settle comfortably between them – Kris eating, Anthony taking notes on what he’ll need to do to prepare for each case.

 

-

 

Day six and Anthony can see that Kris is beginning to climb the walls.

For all that Kris is one of the nicest people Anthony’s come across, especially for someone who has had a demon in his life for over a year, he is still an athlete and athletes tend to get a bit high-strung when kept in one place for six long days with no one but a Catholic priest for company.

Kris still called or texted family and teammates – but, by its nature, it was all still impersonal, there was still a distance, both physical and emotional, that couldn’t quite be bridged by a text. And, aside from the occasional pat or touch as he inspected Kris’s wounds, Anthony kept a certain amount of space between them – another thing Anthony thought an athlete such as Kris would find disturbing since athletes were all so tactile in nature.

Still.

Anthony wanted to avoid the temptation – or even the threat of it – and so he keeps a minimal distance – keeping himself just close enough to stay comforting, but far enough away that there could be no misconstruing the situation. But, as the days go on, the thoughts of such things slip away from Anthony’s mind and he and Kris find themselves in each other’s space more often than not. And it’s comfortable.

 

-

 

Day seven arrives with thunder and lightning and without a hint of that wispy blackness in Kris’s eyes and with the wounds on Kris’s arms fully healed but for faint pink scars.

“You’re going to be fine,” Anthony says, carefully letting Kris’s arm drop from his grasp.

“Does this mean I have to go?” Kris asks and there’s a note of trepidation in his voice that Anthony hadn’t expected but pleases him nonetheless.

Anthony smiles, soft and sure and says, “Not until you’re ready, Kris.”

“Thank you, Father,” Kris says, an echoing smile gracing his lips and filling his face.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Anthony adds, gesturing to his home, “for as long as you need. I’m heading to Pennsylvania in a couple days, then Maryland – but,” he shrugs, “you can stay.”

Kris just keeps smiling and says again, “Thank you, Father.” He looks around Anthony’s home, so much smaller and cramped when compared to Kris’s own, as he says, “I just haven’t found this much peace in so long – I’m not excited to leave it just yet.”

Anthony smirks and says, “You know, you can always come back and visit.”

In retrospect, Anthony probably should have expected the hug – but there’s a hilarious moment where he suddenly finds he can’t breathe before he’s chuckling into Kris’s shoulder.

 

-x-

 

Father Anthony is a lot of people’s last chance, their last hope. He travels the country – going where he’s needed the most – and, sometimes, when he comes home, Kris Bryant is there – doing the dishes and drinking a beer.

And it’s perfect.

 

-z-

 

End.


End file.
